Reach out for New Orleans

Reaching out to others about my experiences in and around New Orleans. I've been volunteering with residents of New Orleans since April 2006, and falling in love with the city and its people since our move to Baton Rouge in 2005.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Music Rising/Gibson assist with music clinic needs

Cool news! I just jumped into the Jazz Fest forum for a Fest4Kidz update about the SilenceIsViolence music clinic donations. One of the Threadheads, Scoop, had contacted the Gibson Foundation with the information about the clinic needs for advice about assistance. They replied with news that Music Rising/Gibson would assist with the needed funds!!!! Awesome!!! Kudos to Scoop for reaching out to them, and a big THANK YOU to the Music Rising Team for being there, once again, to help.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Jazz Fest fans help New Orleans' kids and music culture - you can, too

I had posted earlier about the Threadheads, a group of Jazz Fest fans and friends, that give back to New Orleans every year through their outreach. They're very awesome because of their generosity and consistency in staying involved and caring about the city.

One of the projects in need of support, whether you're near or far from New Orleans, is their Fest4Kids, which works in conjunction with SilenceIsViolence. The information below was shared on the Jazz Fest forum, and it outlines what's needed to keep the music clinics and support for the kids alive. Thank you very much for checking them out and spreading the word.

John, thanks so much for continuing to look out for us! We are starting up the clinics again next week.

We actually are in pretty good shape as regards instruments right now. The contributions you facilitated for us last year gave us a crucial and very solid foundation--I feel confident about inviting kids to come and try whatever instrument they like! I had an Americorps volunteer inventory and assess all of our instruments earlier this week, and we have about as many instruments as we can use given our current capacity (we serve 20-35 kids per week right now, and about half of those bring their own instruments). What we are struggling with a bit is maintaining ample funds for music coaches' stipends, space rental (now that we are using the bigger and better space across the street from Sound Cafe), and private lessons (which became very popular during the most recent series of clinics--a good sign for our progress, but also costly!).

The Threadheads' support has been totally essential in keeping the clinics going...and growing! But we still need additional funds for instruction expenses, as well as dinner when we do not get it donated. Between the Threadheads as a group and individual Threadhead contributions, our spring clinics are about halfway funded; we still need to raise approximately $5,000. If you hear of any relevant grant or contribution opportunities along these lines, please let me know! If all goes well, we will probably be in a position to seek additional instruments about 1 year from now.

Thanks again and WHO DAT!Baty L.

This is probably a good time to ask for Threadhead help. F4K donated all of our raffle $$, plus $1000 from the F4K account to SIV several months ago. (To make an even $10,000). That funded the fall clinic and 1/2 of the upcoming spring clinic. Fest4Kidz is also running low on funds for Jazz Fest expenses for the kids.Hopefully we will receive Fest Foundation Community Outreach tickets, but we won't know until the first week of April and can't count on that.So, my friends, no amount is too small. I know this has been a rough year for everyone, but please give what you can to support our little Threadhead charity. As always, thank you ALL from the bottom of my heart!